Hold Your Nose!

We are about to witness an unprecedented example of misdirected anger and self-defeating behavior in this “demoralizing,” “bizarre,” “surreal” election (take your choice among the dark adjectives).

Right wing lies – and money – have confirmed the new (post-Abraham Lincoln) conventional wisdom that you can fool enough of the people enough of the time in our dysfunctional political system to accomplish just about any nefarious political objective. It’s not our “illegitimate” President Obama, or his “socialist/government takeover” of our health care system, or the “failed” economic stimulus package (40 percent of which consisted of tax cuts!) that is responsible for the mess we are in. It’s our rogue banking system; it’s a corrupted real estate/mortgage industry; it’s having the best political system that corporate money can buy (complete with foxes in the regulatory henhouse); it’s a virulent right wing media that makes a mockery of its claims of “fairness;” it even includes a handful of billionaire plutocrats who are willing to pursue their self-interests at any cost, including the national interest.

If my worst fears for Tuesday’s election are confirmed, what we will get is exactly the opposite of what we need. Instead of a strong re-employment program, instead of shoring up our tattered economic safety net, instead of enacting a comprehensive energy/ conservation program, instead of long overdue immigration reform, instead of a gradual, careful, and selective effort to balance the national budget, what we will get is the usual Republican agenda of tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation, the alpha and omega of the GOP’s vision, as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman put it, along with a full-scale assault on the welfare state – Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, food stamps, the minimum wage, even Head Start and student loans, all in the name of reducing “out of control” government spending. (They seem to have selective, collective amnesia about their role in causing our deficits, namely, the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy that were not offset elsewhere in the budget coupled with unfunded mandates for two costly overseas wars and a new program of Medicare drug benefits, plus a collapse of tax revenues in the wake of the financial meltdown.)

The historic irony here is that all the polls show this is not what the vast majority of Americans want. It’s not their agenda. So why are they voting for it? Or not voting?

Is Our Future Now in the Past?

Lulled by our half century of global preeminence and unable to rise to the challenge of competing in a global economy filled with over-achievers, we have allowed ourselves as a nation to slip badly, as New York Times columnist Tom Friedman documented in a recent piece. The latest evidence is the stunning announcement that the Chinese have leaped to the forefront in super-computing, a technology we invented and long dominated. They are also well ahead of us in solar energy development, a key 21st century technology.

So, what next? There will be a future; that’s unavoidable. The question is what kind of future. What vision of ourselves do we want to pursue? To stay in the global economic game, we are going to have to mobilize ourselves and focus our national priorities in a way we have not done for a long time. But that’s not enough.

In my forthcoming book, I argue that economic “growth” is not an end in itself, it’s a means. We also need to focus on achieving a “fair society”— one in which all of our citizens’ basic needs are provided for (equality), where merit is effectively rewarded and free riding and cheating are deterred or punished (equity), and where everyone contributes a fair share in return for the benefits they receive from society (reciprocity). All this is spelled out in detail in The Fair Society: The Science of Human Nature and the Pursuit of Social Justice. If we can achieve a fair society in these terms (no small undertaking), our future will be assured

Privatizing Water

The growing trend toward turning over our global fresh water resources – which have traditionally been in the public domain – to private sector exploitation may have some merits. A stunning example is the plan to allow a private company to ship 80 million gallons of Alaskan water via tankers to Mumbai India. However, there are also some longer term risks.

Free market principles work well for discretionary purchases that one can forego, or where there are other competing options. Water is different. There is no substitute, and it is absolutely vital to life. In economics jargon, there is absolutely no elasticity in the demand, and everybody demands it.

At present there are no safeguards, no public regulations in any country I know of that provide for the distribution of water as a “social right.” If this is not done, there may ultimately be a lethal conflict between private interests and our basic needs. We should be addressing this issue now.

Civil War?

A civil war may be brewing in our politics, and in our society. Our social contract may be in mortal danger.

The underlying cause is clear enough. Our economic system has become a rigged game that is controlled by a powerful plutocracy of corporate and financial interests, and there is a huge gap between the few who are very rich (less than 1 percent of the population) and the many millions who are in grinding poverty (perhaps 25 percent, if the accounting were done properly). We hold the dubious distinction in this country of having the greatest income inequality in the industrialized world.

While there is nothing new about economic disparities, historically, what is different in this situation is that the implicit bargain that has bound us together as a reasonably stable society is in the process of being shredded. During the post-World War II era, the concentration of wealth at the top of the economic pyramid was much less, jobs were plentiful, the overall standard of living among our workers was relatively high, there were ample opportunities to climb the economic ladder, and there was also a safety net. Moreover, much of the wealth at the top was used to generate more economic prosperity. The benefits did tend to “trickle down.”

Even during the Great Depression, when some 25 percent of our total work force suffered from long term unemployment without the benefit of a safety net, a political revolution was avoided by an activist government (President Roosevelt’s New Deal) that tried everything they could think of to relieve the economic pain (which was shared by the wealthy) and to re-start the economy. It’s generally agreed by historians that FDR and his liberal administration saved capitalism and deflected the twin lures of fascism and communism.

This time is different. Thirty years of conservative attacks on the middle class, from outsourcing to union-busting and welfare “reform,” have undermined our standard of living. Now a serious effort is underway to dismantle the welfare state. By a twist of historical irony, the Obama administration’s efforts to prevent the financial crisis of 2008 from becoming another Great Depression (mainly through the bank bailout and the stimulus package), has had the unintended effect of restoring the power and assertiveness of the plutocrats (and the Republicans) while failing to reignite a badly damaged economy. The wealth at the top has become even more concentrated while an invisible economic cancer has been spreading through nearly every community in the country. Now liberalism has become a scapegoat and conservatism is again in the ascendant politically, with a tailwind of electoral support from the mid-term elections.

The legislative agenda for 2011 is already clear. In the name of balancing the budget and reducing “out of control” government spending (with selective amnesia about its causes, namely, the Bush era tax cuts for the rich coupled with unfunded mandates for two wars plus Medicare drug benefits, and a collapse of tax revenues after the financial meltdown), the Republicans are poised to launch an assault on what remains of the safety net in this country – Social Security, Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment insurance, Head Start, student loans, and much more. Not only will this inflict great suffering on the many millions who are the victims of this recession but it will undermine the fragile economic recovery and turn a severe recession into a prolonged depression. The Obama administration will resist it, but a Republican majority in Congress may control the purse strings.

So far, the liberals (progressives) have been patient with the economic situation, though disappointed with President Obama. But the predictable result of an assault on the welfare state and further damage to the economy will be an aroused and angry left. The recent riots in Greece and France, among others, will pale by comparison, because the proposed cutbacks will fall on the victims while sparing the vast wealth of the few. This is manifestly unfair, and there will be outrage about it.

Of course, Tea Party conservatives don’t see it that way. They see liberals (“socialists”) as the enemy. Many also view Obama as an illegitimate Muslim. So we have the makings of an angry confrontation among a citizenry that is armed to the teeth, thanks to the NRA. Right wing militias are once again on the rise. We may be entering very dangerous waters politically. Let’s hope I’m wrong.

Emotional Disengagement

This is the term psychologists use to characterize our apparently innate and all-too-ready propensity to draw sharp lines between “us” and “them” – our group, tribe, religion, race, political party or nation, and theirs. With someone who is identified as one of “us,” we are predisposed to cooperate, ready to be helpful and may even sacrifice our lives on their behalf. But for outsiders, we are likely to be suspicious, reluctant to cooperate, indifferent to their suffering, hateful, and even willing to torture and kill them without qualms. In its extreme forms, this bipolar disposition is often referred to as ethnocentrism and xenophobia.

We have seen recent evidence of this syndrome in the rising phobia against muslims in this country. This was in the news again this past week when NPR analyst Juan Williams was fired for saying, on Fox News, that he felt fearful when he got on an airplane with people dressed in muslim garb. (Of course, a terrorist is not likely to “advertise” his/her identity this way.) Seems Williams doesn’t trust our famous airport security system!

Another example, even more insidious in its implications, is the so-called “tenther” movement, which sees in the tenth amendment to our constitution a justification for undoing just about everything our government does in the name of the “general welfare” – except defense of course. This is a significant political development, because several tenthers are poised to be elected to the U.S. Congress. Among other things, they would eliminate Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployment insurance, dismantle our child labor laws and union protections, and abolish the Department of Education and its programs (like student loans and grants). The hit list goes on and on.

The ideal here is radical “freedom,” meaning every man for himself and no collective responsibility for one another. In the extreme, it undermines the very notion of a general welfare. It turns a “we” into a “they.” The philosopher Thomas Hobbes called it “a war of every man against every man.”

However, this dark fantasy overlooks the fact that we evolved, over several million years, in closely cooperating social groups. More important, we live in an enormously complex, intensely interdependent society. We depend on the work of many others for our needs and wants. Mutualism and reciprocity are the operative words, not radical freedom. I would argue that the “general welfare” clause trumps the other parts of our constitution and allows us to act together in our collective self interests. In the end, I trust that Social Security and all the rest of the welfare state will survive these libertarian xenophobes.

The Crisis of 2012?

The storm clouds are gathering once again. This time we should heed the warning signs: The “sucking sound” of continued job outsourcing; the return of financial speculation; a dysfunctional mortgage market, with lenders likely to be mired in lawsuits from coast to coast for years to come; Republican triumphalism in the wake of the election, with an effort to reverse the recent gains in re-regulating the private sector; and, most serious, an aggressive, and premature, effort to balance the Federal budget, with drastic cutbacks in government spending, especially in health, welfare, unemployment insurance, and the like.

It seems we haven’t learned the lessons of the 1930s (and Japan in the 1990s), when steep cutbacks in government spending at the wrong time undermined a fragile economic recovery and resulted in a prolonged economic depression.

A major difference between the crisis of 2008 and the reprise in 2012 will be that this time the Left Wing in our society will also be angry – over the continued malfeasance of the banks and financial institutions and the deliberate suffering imposed on the victims, in contrast to the Obama administration’s efforts in 2009 to ameliorate the damage with the so-called stimulus package.

This time there will be anger at both extremes of the political spectrum. And if these two hostile armies confront one another, there may be blood in the streets, followed by ruthless political repression. What will we have come to as a nation?

Political Whores

Strong words, even in this foul-mouthed era, but I think this epithet is entirely appropriate with regard to the issue of climate warming. Call it performing for pay.

How else can you characterize the now nearly unanimous Republican denial of climate warming – a position bought and paid for with bountiful campaign contributions from the energy barons (and profligate polluters) David and Charles Koch. Even Republicans like John McCain and Mark Kirk, once advocates for measures like cap and trade, have become election-year skeptics. The nonsense being spouted by Republican candidates across the landscape includes such gems as the claim that there is no “scientific evidence,” the scientists are “making up their facts,” the science is “very much disputed,” it’s actually caused by “sunspot activity,” “it’s crap,” it’s “Al Gore’s climate porn,” and “it’s a hoax perpetrated by leftist idealogues with an agenda.”

Of course, many Tea Party activists -- the new "base" of the Republican party --oppose climate change legislation, some on religious grounds (God would not do that to us), while many other rank-and-file Republicans get their science from Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and other "experts."

So, it looks like the cap-and-trade bill is dead and the know-nothings are in the saddle. If the Republicans gain control of the Congress in this election, they have sworn to resurrect the Bush-Cheney (big oil) energy policy. You can’t say we haven’t been warned.

Romeo and Juliet Revisited

Sometimes the “humanities” – currently under siege due to the financial cutbacks at colleges all across the country – have their uses in offering us powerful moral lessons. One example can be found in “Romeo and Juliet,” one of Shakespeare’s best known plays.

Almost everyone knows the basic plot. Romeo and Juliet are the archetypical star-crossed lovers. Their families, the Montagues and Capulets, are engaged in an irrational blood-feud; they are bitter enemies for no good purpose, and their fellow citizens are appalled by it: “A plague on both their houses.” So the forbidden love between Romeo and Juliet is doomed and ends in mutual suicide.

In our era, we would call them conservatives and progressives. The lesson here, it seems to me, is that we have a propensity toward irrational and self-destructive behaviors that must be contained and curbed, or we are likely to pay a fearful price. There are honest policy differences between these two polarized political “families.” But there is also a common good that is frequently betrayed in their endless feud.

Our politics has become so toxic – so debased and mutually-destructive – that no good can come from it. It seems we are well along on the road to ruin. But in this modern-day Verona, there may still be a chance to write a different ending. Let’s hope we can yet recover our “humanity.” This is what it means to live in a “civilized” society.

After-Shock!

The new book with this title by Robert Reich, a former Secretary of Labor and now a professor of public policy at U.C. Berkeley, is nothing short of brilliant.

Drawing on the history of the Great Depression in the 1930s, and the analyses of two of the great thinkers that this economic calamity produced (economist John Maynard Keynes and long-time Federal Reserve Chairman Marriner Eccles) Reich correctly (in my view) diagnoses the fundamental cause of our current economic crisis and offers a prescription for recovery that should have been obvious to us. The parallels with the 1930s are striking.

Boiled down to its essentials, the problem is that the wealth of this country has become so concentrated in the hands of a very few super-rich at the top of the economic pyramid (where much of it sloshes around unproductively or is used for financial speculation) that it has impoverished the middle class (the personal debt explosion in recent years has only masked this trend) and has sucked the vitality out of the economy.

Our underlying economic problem, in other words, is structural. The “demand” for goods and services is anemic because the middle class can no longer earn enough to consume all the goods and services (the “supply”) that our economy can produce and can no longer make up the difference with borrowed money. In fact, many of us are now trying to pay down our debts and are even beginning to save a little, making the demand side weakness even worse.

Reich warns that the economy will not recover unless there is a redistribution of wealth (he proposes a number of specific measures) that will put more purchasing power back in the hands of middle class consumers, who can revitalize the demand side of the economy. This is not a radical idea. On the contrary, it would mean a return to the distribution of wealth, and the relative tax burden, that existed during what Reich calls the “Great Prosperity” era in this country, from 1947-1974. Back then, the U.S. enjoyed the lowest disparity between the rich and poor of any major nation. We were the post-war model of a middle class society. Now we are infamous for having the biggest income gap of any of the advanced OECD countries.

So Reich’s “Keynesian” solution has already been tested in this country, and it worked --splendidly -- during the Great Prosperity. A demand side economic strategy would also restore some of the economic and social justice that we have lost over the past 30 years -- or, to be precise, that has been taken away from us. It’s time to fight back.

Soak the Rich?

The conservative/Republican party line is that any attempt to raise taxes on the rich is unjustified – a form of legalized theft imposed on those who deserve their wealth. Does that include the top 25 hedge fund managers who, in 2009, took home an average of $1 billion – yes billion - each?

Funny thing, some of our super-rich disagree with this warped and self-serving view. They don’t think taxing the rich is confiscatory. They think it’s only fair. Thus Bill Gates Sr. has put half a million dollars of his own money into the campaign to pass a ballot initiative in the state of Washington that would for the first time impose an income tax on the high income earners to help pay for education and health care, and to reduce more regressive state taxes.

Likewise, California’s richest business man, Larry Ellison, supports Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown in his efforts to retain that state’s capital gains tax. Perhaps most surprising, Warren Buffet, Ted Turner, George Soros and several other billionaires have signed a joint “Responsible Wealth” proclamation that calls for preserving our national inheritance taxes.

What these and other unselfish actions say, very loudly, is that there are two sides to the issue of taxing the wealthy. Some of our super-rich feel a sense of responsibility to our society as a whole and to the “public interest” and feel they should pay their fair share to support it. They are carrying on a tradition that goes back at least to Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, and many others throughout our history who used their wealth to benefit society. By their actions, they shame the clueless rich whose greed and selfishness can undermine the common good. These subversive views must be challenged and rejected.

As I Was Saying

True to form, New Gingrich’s latest rant is against food stamps. It’s further evidence that Newt’s moral compass has been “caged” and is inoperative. He’s all for tax cuts for the rich, though, and he thinks the alternative to food stamps is to force the recipients to go out and look for a job. Hasn’t he heard that they already are looking for work and that there are six seekers for every available job in this country?

These ideologically blinded Republicans are wading around in a moral cesspool, and the stench has become sickening. It’s time for us to stop just holding our noses and to strike back. Hey Newt, it’s those rich, corrupt bankers who are the enemy, not food stamp recipients. In the old days, they used to be called the victims.

Newt got it backwards in his latest book, To Save America. The problem is, how do we save America from him?

The Synergism Hypothesis Revisited

The 30th anniversary of the Synergism Hypothesis will be commemorated at a biology and politics conference at Indiana University this week. I’ll be there.

The basic idea is that the evolution of “complexity” has been driven (at all levels) by the phenomenon of functional synergy – novel combined, or cooperative effects that are not otherwise attainable. The theory shifts the focus from competition and the genetics of evolution to cooperation and the economics of evolution, so it has taken many years for this simple idea to gain traction. But things are changing, and the theory has become more respectable of late. (For more on this theory, see my website: www.complexsystems.org .)

Looking ahead, it seems likely that the Synergism Hypothesis will ultimately prove to be another case of what the automotive pioneer Charles Kettering called “the paradigm of progress.” When you come up with a new idea, at first people will say “it won’t work, and I can prove it.” But, after a while, they will say, “well, it works, but it’s not important.” Finally, they’ll acknowledge that “yes, it’s important, but we knew it all along.” In the final reckoning, I’ll settle for that.

The Psychodrama of Glenn Beck

The puzzle of Glenn Beck – a deeply hostile and anti-social force in our troubled society – was demystified a bit in the cover story by Mark Leibovich in last week’s New York Times Magazine.

Beck comes from a seriously dysfunctional family, with parental alcoholism, a divorce, and a probable suicide by his mother when he was a teenager. This was followed by a meandering history of radio jobs, a marriage and divorce, and a long, dark period of personal alcoholism and depression.

He is angry at himself and angry at others, especially those who are trying to do some good in our society. Presidents Obama and Woodrow Wilson (of all people) are special targets of his bile; “progressive” is a dirty word in his vocabulary. Yet at times he seems troubled about his negative influence and harbors dark premonitions.

No wonder, then, that he has become a magnet and a spokesman for a segment of our society that feels alienated and betrayed – people whose anger is matched by their ignorance and who lash out in irrational ways. This is a story that is likely to end badly.

Gerrymandering Fairness

Democracy as an ideal is based on the principle that everyone has an equal voice and equal power in determining the course of government. Indeed, the original Greek word demokratia means rule by the people.

There are many ways in which we fall far short of this ideal, needless to say. The disproportionate role of big money and powerful corporations in our political system is one obvious example. So is the very nature of the U.S. Senate, where 18 percent of the population in thinly populated states with two senators each can, in theory, control the legislative process in Washington.

But perhaps one of the least appreciated, most important, and fixable biases in our democracy has to do with how our Congressional districts are apportioned. In 44 of our 50 states, it is the (partisan) state legislature that determines how the districts will be configured after each decennial census. And this blatantly self-serving arrangement (for whichever party is in power) has resulted in an egregious practice called gerrymandering, after Governor Elbridge Gerry of Massuchusetts who, in 1812, conspired to draw a Congressional district that was so contorted it reminded people of a salamander. The practice has continued, with far worse examples to show for it, down to the present day. The result is a political map in most states that reduces competition, maximizes the number of “safe districts” for the party that controls the redistricting process, and generally makes no geographic or administrative sense.

This practice is so blatantly unfair and destructive to the democratic ideal that we ought to be ashamed of ourselves for allowing it to continue. More states should follow the example of California, which has taken the lead in shifting to a system that allows a non-partisan, independent commission to draw the district lines, as many other democratic nations do. In California, this change was achieved by the voters with a ballot initiative. Unfortunately, most other states don’t have that option, so it will be a much harder slog. It is a major agenda item for a fair society.

Beyond the Sound Bites

The gross deficiencies in our normal diet of sound bite news were clearly evident in the hour-long White House interview with President Obama published in the October 14th issue of Rolling Stone. It was an amazing interview with an amazing man.

I will stick my neck out and say that I believe more than ever that our president is a great human being. Whether or not he rises to become a great president remains to be seen. But he deserves a better report card for the first two years than many progressives are willing to give him. As for the Republican “hopefuls,” none of them can lick his boots -- to resurrect an old fashioned expression. They are a parade of pygmies.

Mother’s Milk

Many years ago, one of the old-time Tammany Hall political bosses famously called money “the mother’s milk of politics.” These days, it’s more like heroin, or crack cocaine, where the more you get the more you need and the more damage it does to our political system.

Thus, Meg Whitman, the billionaire former CEO of eBay (sometimes God does “play dice” with personal fortunes, it seems), is spending $145 million of her own money on the race for governor of California, by far an all-time record. She claims, disingenuously, that money alone doesn’t determine the outcome in elections (let’s hope she can prove it in her own case), but it certainly helps a lot.

More to the point, it has become a sine qua non. It’s no longer a “representative” democracy if only those with personal fortunes, or who can pick the deep pockets of others, are able to run a successful election campaign. The game is rigged. But the rules could be changed if we had the political will to do so. Where is our paladin?

Our Savior

Winston Churchill once said of an opponent, “There but for the grace of God goes God.” In Newt Gingrich’s case, the devil got there first. In his latest book (well, parts of it were written “with” others, but it has his name on it), Gingrich is out “To Save America” from President Obama’s “secular-socialist machine,” which he says threatens a Nazi style tyranny. God save us from Newt, the Gingrich who stole Christmas.

Gingrich tells us that “America is facing a mortal threat. The Left have expanded their power through their control [sic] of academia, the elite news media, union leaders, trial lawyers, the bureaucracy, the courts, and lobbyists at the state and federal levels.” Funny that we haven’t noticed this.

Among other things, Gingrich opposes “death taxes” on billionaires, and trying “terrorists” (guilty until proven innocent) in our courts. He would phase out Social Security in favor of “personal accounts.” He tells us that “our own politicians won’t let us use” our “huge reserves of oil and natural gas” including shale deposits across several western states and “BP’s recent discovery of up to 6 billion barrels of oil and natural gas in the Gulf of Mexico”[!!!]. He also favors a restoration of “Reaganomics” – reduced taxes on corporations and the wealthy, elimination of the capital gains tax, deep government spending reductions (except for defense) and more “deregulation,” not less, which he calls (in defiance of reality) “the most successful economic policies in our history.”

Imagine what the Republican party would be like if the Wizard of Oz could give Sarah Palin a brain, Newt Gingrich a heart and John McCain some political courage. (Christine O’Donnell could play the wicked witch of the West, since she’s already had some practice.)

Paladino is no Paladin

Paladins are hard to find these days. They are, historically, heroes who have championed some noble cause or objective. Think of Teddy Roosevelt, who played a leading role in the creation of our national parks, or Martin Luther King (need I say more?).

Carl Paladino, the Republican candidate for governor of New York, is about as far removed from his namesake as you can get. He’s foul mouthed, belligerent, deceptive and thoroughly hypocritical. In fact he’s what you could call a “worst case” developer, the kind who made a fortune with sweetheart deals, government subsidies and largesse, and a pattern of well-aimed political donations to facilitate his personal objectives. Yet he is running for governor as an “outsider” and reformer who will clean up the corruption in Albany. Seriously.

If New Yorkers are gullible enough to vote him into office, it will be one more sign that, as a society, we have lost our bearings and maybe our senses.

A Third Party?

The respected New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman last weekend suggested, in a deeply disturbing essay, that a new political party might be needed to bring real change to our politics and enable us to address our urgent problems, like climate warming, our costly and debilitating overseas wars and, oh yes, the devastation in our economy and society. “There is a revolution brewing in our country,” he tells us, “and it is not just the right wing but in the radical center.”

Friedman invokes historian Lewis Mumford’s warnings about how the decline of the Roman empire was closely associated with decay, and corruption, in Rome’s political system, and he sees a similar dry rot at work in our politics. He tells us that there are at least two nascent third party movements afoot, one on each coast, that want to challenge “the stagnating duopoly that has been presiding over our nation’s steady incremental decline.”

Much good it will do these rebels, for the fact is that our two major parties are creatures of, and embedded in, a dysfunctional political system, and society. The problems go much deeper. We have a seriously outdated set of cumbersome eighteenth century institutions, the product of a political compromise by our founding fathers, a Supreme Court packed with ideologically blinded conservatives that are clearly biased toward corporate interests, and an electoral system in which money shouts so loudly that nobody else can be heard. Then there is the “invisible hand” of lobbyists, and the revolving door between government and the private sector. And, not least, we have an immature, uninformed and inattentive electorate that is susceptible to the worst kind of demagogues.

It’s a rigged game, and it’s doubtful that any third party movement could gain enough leverage to force through a change in the rules of the game, short of a crisis like another Great Depression. Indeed, third party movements in our history have often had the unintended effect of dividing the dominant party and benefiting the minority party. Maybe that’s our best hope. Maybe the Tea Party will ultimately alienate so many main stream Republicans, and vice versa, that they will coalesce into a third party. Let’s hear it for Sarah Palin as the Tea Party candidate in 2012!

“America’s Best Idea”

This is the subtitle for filmmaker Ken Burns’s new series on our national parks. As the narrator for the film points out, our 391 national parks, national seashores, historic sites and national monuments, comprising some 84 million acres all told, represent a unique fulfillment of the democratic ideal that no other country on Earth can match. They are jointly owned and maintained by all of us collectively “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people,” (not just the rich but all of us) to quote the proclamation from the enabling legislation that is carved into the famous archway at our first national park, Yellowstone.

But there is also a morality tale on a grand scale behind the history of our parks. Almost every one of these protected enclaves represents a victory in the age-old struggle between the forces of private self-interest and the shared, common interest of society as a whole. Some of the protracted political battles that were waged to preserve some of our most magnificent natural areas and historic sites – from Yellowstone to Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, the Everglades, and many others – involved a very close call against the forces of greed and destructive private exploitation. Nor is this war forever won. Economic predators of various kinds lurk just offstage in many cases. We need to remain vigilant if we want to protect what was achieved by previous generations.

“We Rob Banks”

In the pathbreaking 1960s movie about two Depression-era bank robbers (and lovers) “Bonnie and Clyde,” there is a scene in which Clyde tells an inquiring stranger, somewhat proudly, that “we rob banks.” The stranger seems impressed, for banks were much-hated villains in those days. Well, this time around, the banks seem to be robbing us.

First there were the hundred-billion-dollar taxpayer bailouts for the banks followed by a quick return to paying out billion dollar bonuses to their executives. Then there were the taxpayer funds intended to stimulate lending that the banks instead have been hoarding. Now it seems that a corrupt mortgage lending system has morphed into an equally corrupt mortgage foreclosure system in which an array of probably illegal practices have been used by some of our largest banks and mortgage lenders to boot delinquent homeowners out of their homes. As the Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein put it, our bankers are “doing God’s work.” I wonder which God he had in mind.

"It Ain’t Over ‘Till It’s Over"

Yogi Berra’s famous line also applies to our Great Recession. The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), our official recession scorekeeper, has declared that the recession ended in 2009. Funny, almost nobody down in the muddy trenches of our economy seems to thinks so.

The problem is that the NBER over-weights stock prices, corporate profits, business activity, and the like and under-weights such things as unemployment, under-employment, poverty levels, hunger, and even home prices – the things that matter to most of us. More important, the NBER’s pronouncement means only that our economic swoon has hit bottom. NBER does not have a good benchmark or measuring rod for recovery – for the restoration of a truly healthy economy.

The fact is that there has been very little recovery, if any, in employment. House prices are still in the pits. Poverty and homelessness are still increasing and hunger has become a silent specter in this country. Meanwhile, many of the interests, and people, who played a large role in getting us into this mess may get a second chance in November. There is no method in this madness.

Pep Talk

The other day I spotted a highway billboard, sponsored by a local bank, with the inspirational message “Optimism is contagious.” Short memory, I thought. There might not be so much pessimism out there if the banks had not engaged in reckless behavior and nearly brought down the economy. If optimism is contagious, so is pessimism. It’s much easier to be optimistic if your bank was bailed out by the taxpayers and if your job is secure. And it would be a lot easier for the rest of us to be optimistic if we had jobs and, if those who are still employed had a full time job at a living wage with a secure future.

In short, our bankers should skip giving us pep talks and start helping to change the fundamentals, say by starting to loan money again, or by modifying mortgages that are underwater. Or by cleaning up a corrupt home foreclosure process that has done an untold amount of damage.